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UMWA Chief Blasts Patriot Coal Bankruptcy Move

ST. LOUIS (AP) â¿¿ The top official with a national miners' union on Monday called bankrupt Patriot Coal Corp.'s bid to cut retiree health care immoral, as it seeks millions of dollars for executive bonuses and faces mounting payouts of $16 million in legal fees and expenses.

"Patriot has thousand-dollar-an-hour lawyers and two-dollar-an-hour morals," United Mine Workers of America President Cecil Roberts told reporters, four days after St. Louis-based Patriot filed a request in bankruptcy court to modify its collective bargaining agreements with the union.

In pursuing Chapter 11 bankruptcy last July, Patriot cited exceptionally soft coal markets, rising costs and "unsustainable legacy liabilities" tied to its 2007 spinoff from St. Louis-based Peabody Energy Corp. Patriot said coal markets have only worsened since then, contributing to what the company now says are crushing labor and retirement benefit expenses requiring "critical financial relief in a timeframe that avoids severe business disruption."

Patriot, claiming its retiree health liability has ballooned to $1.6 billion, last week proposed creating a trust with a maximum of $300 million from future profit-sharing to fund some level of those benefits, with Patriot making an initial contribution of $15 million.

Patriot CEO Bennett Hatfield said the moves are "necessary for the survival of Patriot and the preservation of more than 4,000 jobs." Without such relief, he argued, Patriot no longer could provide health care to 10,000 retired miners and 13,000 dependents.

A hearing is scheduled for April 10.

While decrying $7 million in executive bonuses that Patriot wants a bankruptcy court to approve, Roberts warned Thursday that potentially sweeping health care cuts could be ruinous to tens of thousands of retirees and their survivors that he said could be forced to sell their homes or drain their savings to pay for medical care.